The present invention is related to configuration management databases, and more specifically to configuration management database (CMDB)-based policy propagation.
Policy is an approach for both governance and automation. Governance constrains behavior of people and resources. Automation replaces (or supplements) human actions with automated actions. Configuration management databases (CMDBs) hold resource configuration data and relationships among the resources, among other information.
FIG. 1 shows a diagram of information contained in a configuration management database (CMDB). A CMDB 100 may contain a model of the physical topology 101 showing the various physical components of a network, system, enterprise, etc., and a database 102 that contains relationships among the physical components shown in the physical topology. In this example, the network contains a router 102 interconnected to a Linux® server 103 (Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. Further, the Linux server 103 that may host a trading application 104. The trading application 104 may use a Network Attached Storage (NAS) 105 and database 106.
The CMDB stores the relationships among these physical components as shown in the database 102 which has configuration items for each of the physical components shown in the physical topology 101. Accordingly, the CMDB will contain a router configuration item 112 representing with the router 102, a NAS configuration item 115 representing the NAS 105, a trading application configuration item 114 representing the trading application 104, a Linux server configuration item 113 representing the Linux server 103, and a database configuration item 116 representing the database 106.